“Shout Your Abortion” is a social media campaign to normalize abortion by encouraging women who have had abortions to post (in all positive terms, without any of the guilt or regret) their abortion experiences. It is now complete with endorsements from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, a book entitled “Shout Your Abortion” and videos. The latest promotional video is among the most incredulous promotional videos I’ve ever watched. The fact that it targets children gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Click here to watch.
Here are some of the false assertions and misinformation presented in the video:
1. There is a difference in whether elective abortion is right or wrong based on circumstances in the life of the mother.
In fact, every murder of every newborn could be justified using the same rationale. If the circumstances of family size, busy-ness, poverty, need for education, etc…are legitimate factors in the decision of whether or not to abort, the same factors are certainly applicable with regard to whether or not it would be right to kill newborn babies.
2. Having unprotected sex, as a shortcut, is not reckless. This does not even warrant a refutation.
3. The abortionist “sucks the pregnancy out.”
While it is true that the pregnancy is ended simultaneously as the baby is suctioned out of the womb, ‘“pregnancy” is a condition; not the “substance” in the “straw”. It’s just a lot more palatable to say it that way.
4. Someone can be “forced to create life.”
No one but God creates life and forms in the womb. If she means, on the other hand, “forced to have a baby”…well, no one, with the exception of someone who is raped, is ever impregnated by force. People who have convenience abortions, are not threatened with forced “creation of life”. This is a serious error on so many levels.
5. Abortion is “part of God’s plan.”
To assign murder to the purposes of the Almighty is not only untrue, but blasphemous. Not only did our God never sanction the taking of life, but He expressed His purpose, presence and will regarding unborn life (Psalm 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:5; Job 31:15). To say that abortion is part of God’s plan is completely oppositional to anything the Bible says about pre-born life. If a person wants to promote abortion in America, our government, of course, supports her right to do so. But let’s judiciously leave God out of that promotion.
6. “It’s up to you.”
…This one does not really belong in this list of false assertions, because, ultimately, in our country, a woman does get to decide whether or not to end her pregnancy (i.e. abort her baby). Choice—free will— is also an integral facet of God’s scheme of redemption. Men and women get to choose their eternal destinies. They get to choose acceptance or rejection of God’s plan. That’s what makes every sin a matter of human choice.
7. “I feel supported.”
People in a society that has rejected God, His word, and thus His system of morality, can feel a great deal of support in a variety of sinful choices. Lot could have felt very supported in sodomy (Genesis 19…The very name of that sin confirms that this is true.) The Cretans might have felt very comfortable in being liars (Titus 1:12). The Canaanites of old would have had no qualms about worshiping Molech (Leviticus 20:5). And today, Americans who are disposed to adultery, divorce, homosexuality, the commission of abortion, the viewing of pornography and participation in any number of vile entertainment forms can certainly “feel supported” in the process.
8. A pre-born baby, particularly in the early stages of pregnancy, is like an arm; not a human being.
The young boy in the video went on to attempt to validate his assertion by saying that the fetus is “not capable of complex human thought.” Once again, a newborn is not capable of complex human thought, either. But he/she is not an arm. In truth, the pre-born baby, like the newborn baby, has all genetic material… a completely written DNA code; thus all physical characteristics have already been determined. They are characteristics that are independent of those of the mother. A person’s appendages do not have a separate DNA code from that of the rest of the body on which it has grown. An arm can never, no matter how much nutrition and time are offered, grow to live its own life. The analogy which compares an arm to the pre-born is simply not a valid analogy in any relevant way. And a sea cucumber??!! Let’s not even go there.
9. “Old white dudes in government …” How racist and disrespectful can one characterization be? I cannot even imagine the ire if this statement were made with a cultural reversal of some key words.
10. It’s not really pro-life. It’s “anti-choice.”
Here she admits that the reason she prefers “anti-choice” is that no-one wants to be anti-life. “Who would not want to be described as being pro-life?” But, if the fetus is alive (and it is), then it is life. If it is life, then it is human life. Those who are attempting to preserve rather than destroy that life could rightly be described as advocates for that life or, in a more succinct term, “pro-life.”
11. It’s like a dentist appointment.
The inference here is that nothing more is going on in an abortion than getting a tooth filled or extracted or having a root canal. She even says, “It’s like a body thing that’s uncomfortable.” The intentional ending of a pregnancy is not at all like having dental work done. When a person leaves the dentist office, no beating heart has been stopped.
It’s very important to notice that Ms. Bonow understands that she has no choice but to deny that personhood begins at conception in order to sustain the celebration of her abortion. Every person who ever contemplates the morality of abortion has to ultimately decide if a baby in the womb is a human being. In almost every case, a heart is beating by the time a woman knows she is pregnant. Remember, all genetic traits have also been decided. Every chromosome has been received. Certainly it cannot be denied that life has begun. If the baby is not alive, there is no reason to abort or “kill” it. It is alive and it is human. It is a living human being. When one accepts this unavoidable truth, there are no remaining moral bases for elective abortion. Remember: All the remaining “reasons” for aborting fetuses could be utilized should I want to “get rid of” a newborn baby.
Lastly, it should be said that this new facebook group/book/agenda to “Shout Your Abortion” contains no new information and no new elements of the pro-choice movement. There are no new arguments and no new scientific evidence to support abortion advocacy. Two elements of the “Shout Your Abortion” movement are, however, excessively nauseating to people like me. The first is the realization that the original facebook post, celebrating an abortion, went viral and that a book promoting public pride in abortion is, in many places in our country, a best-seller. The pride factor, in a country that once recognized the sanctity of life, is heart-rending.
The second, and most tragic element of the “Shout Your Abortion” movement is that it plunges to a new moral low: encouraging children to be supportive of the taking of other children’s lives. Its purpose is to make the killing palatable to kids prior to their abilities to fully understand the ramifications and ethics of the mass genocide of the unborn. That’s a kind of subtle brainwashing that confuses children about the huge difference between an appendage and a baby in the womb and simultaneously hides the similarities between a pre-born and a just-born baby.
The definition of genocide from Webster’s New World Dictionary is as follows:
gen·o·cide – n.
The deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable.
May God help His people to protect America’s children before and after birth.
Since genocide always begins with the dehumanization of the unwanted group Bonow’s goal, then, has to be to get teens to think of a pre-born baby as an appendage; like a tooth ready for extraction or even a pregnancy in a straw (anything but a human baby). If she can get children to overlook the humanness of the fetus before they are old enough to parent or vote or understand the spiritual ramifications of life and death, she will have voices shouting abortions in the next generation. But tactics that prey on the naivety and innocence of the minds of children and do it in public sessions of propagandizing for internet consumption are simply intellectual and philosophical bullying.